Carthage also had a house called the Photoplay Theatre, opened in late 1909 or early 1910 and still running in 1912 when a photo and brief description of it appeared on this page of the January 27 issue of The Moving Picture World. The Photoplay could, of course, have been an earlier name for one or another of Carthage’s other theaters.
Bill Counter’s research (at tovangar2’s link) indicates that this house was called the Cecil Theatre only in the 1910 directory. In 1908-1909 and again in 1911 it was the Royal Theatre. In the absence of any city directories from 1912-1914 I don’t know if the house went back to the name Cecil after 1911, but for now I’m inclined to think we should also list the theater as the Royal, with Cecil as an aka, even though that might cause a bit of confusion with the currently-operating Royal Theatre in Sawtelle.
The Columbia Theatre was in operation prior to 1919. An April 7, 1944, item in the Anadarko Daily News said that Ray Rector had sold the Columbia Theatre to Wesley and Maude Hodges. It said that Rector was only three months short of having operated the theater for 25 years, having bought it from Eddie Davis shortly after the first world war.
The Columbia Theatre was located on West Broadway, according to an item in the December 19, 1950, Daily News. The house had just been closed, but there were tentative plans to reopen it in January. I haven’t found anything confirming that it did reopen, though. The Redskin and Miler Theatres, both opened in 1947, were still in operation, but a fourth house, the Moore Theatre, had closed earlier in 1950.
Anadarko’s four movie theaters were sold to new operators in 1950. An article about the sale in the February 7 issue of the Anadarko Daily News said that Maurice DeFord had opened the Miller Theatre in May, 1947. The rival Redskin Theatre had been opened February 12 that same year by the Hodges family, operators of the Columbia and Moore Theatres. The Hodges family had also operated the Broadway Theatre, which they closed around the time they opened the Redskin.
A September 29, 1944, item in the Anadarko Daily News said that Wade Moore had sold the Moore Theatre, at 212 W. Main Street, to Mrs. Maude Hodges, operator of the Broadway Theatre for the previous twelve years, and her son Leroy. Moore, the article said, had owned the theater for nearly 34 years, which would give an opening year of about 1911, or earlier if Moore had taken over an existing theater.
Ritz Theatre was a new name for a house that was originally called the Princess Theatre, and which was in operation by early 1912. According to this page at Frankfort Place Forum, the Ritz building has been occupied by the Dan Caddell Jewelery store since the mid-1950s. The address is 54 N. Main Street.
The new name of this theater was styled De Ray, rather than DeRay, according to the congratulatory ads for its opening in the June 2, 1929 issue of The Joplin Globe. The old Lyric Theatre had been extensively remodeled, with plans by Joplin architect T. E. Martinie. The block on which it was located is now the site of the Joplin Public Library.
The Ritz Theatre was added to the Register of Historic Kansas Places on November 8, 2014. The Registration form (PDF here) says that the theater officially opened on April 30, 1926, and that Joplin architect T. E. Martinie handled the conversion of the building from its former use as a dry goods store into a movie theater.
An article in the January 27, 1922, issue of The Joplin Globe concerning an event that had taken place on November 21, 1921, indicated that the Crane Theatre in Carthage had at that time been under construction. It most likely opened in the early part of 1922.
ldc402000: If you want to submit a theater for the database, click on the “Theaters” link in the blue masthead at the top of this page. On the page the link fetches you’ll see “Submit your favorite” at the top of the right column. Put the theater name in the box below that and click “Add.” Another page will then come up where you can put additional information about the theater on a form, and then a second page with another form after that.
After you’ve filled in as much of the form as you can, click the “Finish Theater and Save” box. The site’s theater editor will check the form and see if more information is available from other sources, such as the Film Daily Yearbooks, and then will post a page for the theater to the site.
Don’t worry if you have to leave most of the boxes on the forms blank. A lot of theaters get added with very little information available, and people commenting on the page later add more information that can then be added to the theater description by the editor.
gabrielbarr: An earlier comment by long-time Cinema Treasure member William says that the California theater got a Skouras-style remodeling in 1952. That was probably when the current marquee was installed.
There might have been an earlier remodeling under the Skouras regime (major theaters in the chain would get an updating every few years, and the California would have been due for one in the late 1930s or early 1940s) but the pre-war marquees tended to be more elaborate than the one on the California, so it is most likely a post-war creation, and thus most likely installed as part of the 1952 project.
The location of the Tumbleweed Theatre should to be changed to El Monte, California. Although local residents called the small section of El Monte in which the theater was located Five Points, so named for the intersection of Valley Boulevard, Garvey Avenue, and Cogswell Road, the only place in California that was ever officially called Five Points was, and is, in Fresno County.
The approximate address of the Tumbleweed Theatre was 11928 Garvey Avenue. A free-standing El Pollo Loco restaurant has been built at that address (Bing Maps bird’s-eye view) in the parking lot of the Five Points Shopping Center, and it is almost exactly where the theater was in this 1939 photo.
The photo page for this theater includes a scan of a 1954 newspaper photo, the caption of which indicates that the theater was being converted into offices for a freighting company. The photo shows that the theater’s poster cases still have the name Southlawn over them. The headline over the photo also says Southlawn Theatre.
As the house was still listed as the Southlawn Theatre in the 1950 FDY, and was closed by 1954, at which time the name Southlawn was still on the poster cases, I suspect that it never was called the Southland Theatre.
I also have a suspicion that the name Southland became attached to this theater through a typo near the bottom of this web page. Under some scans of ads for the theater is the line “The Southland Theater advertisements are from in and around 1936.” But the ads clearly say Southlawn.
This web page from a walking tour of downtown Richmond says that the Tivoli Theatre was built in 1926.
A business chronology published in the April 26, 2009, issue of the Richmond Palladium-Item (PDF here) has an ad for the Thor Construction Company, established 1987, and it says that the company remodeled the Sidewalk Cinema that year to add a second screen.
This web page from the Indiana Economic Digest has an excerpt from a Palladium-Item article about the Tivoli’s Wurlitzer organ (there’s a link to the original newspaper article but it now fetches only an error page.)
The Wikipedia page for this theater (which has several photos) says that it was designed by Italian architect Odoardo Cavagnari. A number of other Internet sources call Cavagnari an engineer. Archinform says he was both. As head of the colonial government’s Civil Engineering Office from 1912 to 1918, he prepared master plans for the cities of Asmara and Keren.
A vintage postcard of Spruce Street which looks to be from the early 1940s occasionally shows up on auction web sites (this link will probably go away soon.) The Princess Theatre is at the right. Comparing the postcard with modern street view, I think the Princess must have been on the east side of Spruce just south of First Street (Nebraska Highway 61.) It would have been across the street from the current locations of Verizon Wireless and H&R Block, so its most likely address would have been 17 N. Spruce Street.
The last section of this web page from the Farmingdale-Bethpage Historical Society says that the Unqua began in a shed-like structure. The April 7, 1916, issue of The Long Islander had this item about the theater construction project then underway:
“A scaffold in use at the Unqua Theatre, being erected on Main street by Smith & Beierling, collapsed Tuesday, badly shaking up several of the men employed on the job. Fortunately no one was seriously injured, although several were badly scratched.”
It’s possible that the 1916 project was the rebuilding of the Unqua’s original shed-like building, but I’ve found no other items about the construction project, nor any earlier mentions of the theater, so I’m not certain.
CinemaTour actually lists the Opera House. It’s possible they have a source indicating that it did show movies at some point, but I haven’t found any. The caption of a photo of the Opera House about ¾ of the way down this web page says that it opened in 1909, was converted into a woodworking shop in 1915, and was destroyed by fire in 1923. It did present some vaudeville shows during its brief life as a theater, though, and vaudeville shows were often accompanied by a reel or two of movies.
This item about the Criterion Theatre appeared in the July 18, 1927, issue of The Film Daily:
“Remodel Tonkawa House
“Tonkawa, Okla.— Work of remodeling the Criterion has been begun by J. M. Scwab, local contractor. The house, which was damaged by fire two months ago, has been bought by the Griffith Amusement Co., of Oklahoma City.”
According to the report on drive-in construction in 1952 that appeared on Boxoffice of January 10, 1953, the Community Drive-In at Mascot, Tennessee, had been opened by the Cherokee Amusement Company. Car capacity and date of opening were not given.
The Carmike Movies 2 in La Follette closed in February, 2015. A January 23 report from ABC television affiliate WATE said that Carmike’s lease on the theater would be up on February 19, and that the building would then be converted into a new home for The Harbor, a community church.
The address of the law firm that now occupies the former Farmingdale Theatre is 360 N. Main Street. 354 was the address of the earlier Strand Theatre next door.
Carthage also had a house called the Photoplay Theatre, opened in late 1909 or early 1910 and still running in 1912 when a photo and brief description of it appeared on this page of the January 27 issue of The Moving Picture World. The Photoplay could, of course, have been an earlier name for one or another of Carthage’s other theaters.
Bill Counter’s research (at tovangar2’s link) indicates that this house was called the Cecil Theatre only in the 1910 directory. In 1908-1909 and again in 1911 it was the Royal Theatre. In the absence of any city directories from 1912-1914 I don’t know if the house went back to the name Cecil after 1911, but for now I’m inclined to think we should also list the theater as the Royal, with Cecil as an aka, even though that might cause a bit of confusion with the currently-operating Royal Theatre in Sawtelle.
The Miller Theatre is at the southwest corner of W. Main and NW 2nd Street. Here is Google Street View.
The Columbia Theatre was in operation prior to 1919. An April 7, 1944, item in the Anadarko Daily News said that Ray Rector had sold the Columbia Theatre to Wesley and Maude Hodges. It said that Rector was only three months short of having operated the theater for 25 years, having bought it from Eddie Davis shortly after the first world war.
The Columbia Theatre was located on West Broadway, according to an item in the December 19, 1950, Daily News. The house had just been closed, but there were tentative plans to reopen it in January. I haven’t found anything confirming that it did reopen, though. The Redskin and Miler Theatres, both opened in 1947, were still in operation, but a fourth house, the Moore Theatre, had closed earlier in 1950.
Anadarko’s four movie theaters were sold to new operators in 1950. An article about the sale in the February 7 issue of the Anadarko Daily News said that Maurice DeFord had opened the Miller Theatre in May, 1947. The rival Redskin Theatre had been opened February 12 that same year by the Hodges family, operators of the Columbia and Moore Theatres. The Hodges family had also operated the Broadway Theatre, which they closed around the time they opened the Redskin.
A September 29, 1944, item in the Anadarko Daily News said that Wade Moore had sold the Moore Theatre, at 212 W. Main Street, to Mrs. Maude Hodges, operator of the Broadway Theatre for the previous twelve years, and her son Leroy. Moore, the article said, had owned the theater for nearly 34 years, which would give an opening year of about 1911, or earlier if Moore had taken over an existing theater.
Ritz Theatre was a new name for a house that was originally called the Princess Theatre, and which was in operation by early 1912. According to this page at Frankfort Place Forum, the Ritz building has been occupied by the Dan Caddell Jewelery store since the mid-1950s. The address is 54 N. Main Street.
The new name of this theater was styled De Ray, rather than DeRay, according to the congratulatory ads for its opening in the June 2, 1929 issue of The Joplin Globe. The old Lyric Theatre had been extensively remodeled, with plans by Joplin architect T. E. Martinie. The block on which it was located is now the site of the Joplin Public Library.
The Ritz Theatre was added to the Register of Historic Kansas Places on November 8, 2014. The Registration form (PDF here) says that the theater officially opened on April 30, 1926, and that Joplin architect T. E. Martinie handled the conversion of the building from its former use as a dry goods store into a movie theater.
An article in the January 27, 1922, issue of The Joplin Globe concerning an event that had taken place on November 21, 1921, indicated that the Crane Theatre in Carthage had at that time been under construction. It most likely opened in the early part of 1922.
ldc402000: If you want to submit a theater for the database, click on the “Theaters” link in the blue masthead at the top of this page. On the page the link fetches you’ll see “Submit your favorite” at the top of the right column. Put the theater name in the box below that and click “Add.” Another page will then come up where you can put additional information about the theater on a form, and then a second page with another form after that.
After you’ve filled in as much of the form as you can, click the “Finish Theater and Save” box. The site’s theater editor will check the form and see if more information is available from other sources, such as the Film Daily Yearbooks, and then will post a page for the theater to the site.
Don’t worry if you have to leave most of the boxes on the forms blank. A lot of theaters get added with very little information available, and people commenting on the page later add more information that can then be added to the theater description by the editor.
gabrielbarr: An earlier comment by long-time Cinema Treasure member William says that the California theater got a Skouras-style remodeling in 1952. That was probably when the current marquee was installed.
There might have been an earlier remodeling under the Skouras regime (major theaters in the chain would get an updating every few years, and the California would have been due for one in the late 1930s or early 1940s) but the pre-war marquees tended to be more elaborate than the one on the California, so it is most likely a post-war creation, and thus most likely installed as part of the 1952 project.
The location of the Tumbleweed Theatre should to be changed to El Monte, California. Although local residents called the small section of El Monte in which the theater was located Five Points, so named for the intersection of Valley Boulevard, Garvey Avenue, and Cogswell Road, the only place in California that was ever officially called Five Points was, and is, in Fresno County.
The approximate address of the Tumbleweed Theatre was 11928 Garvey Avenue. A free-standing El Pollo Loco restaurant has been built at that address (Bing Maps bird’s-eye view) in the parking lot of the Five Points Shopping Center, and it is almost exactly where the theater was in this 1939 photo.
The photo page for this theater includes a scan of a 1954 newspaper photo, the caption of which indicates that the theater was being converted into offices for a freighting company. The photo shows that the theater’s poster cases still have the name Southlawn over them. The headline over the photo also says Southlawn Theatre.
As the house was still listed as the Southlawn Theatre in the 1950 FDY, and was closed by 1954, at which time the name Southlawn was still on the poster cases, I suspect that it never was called the Southland Theatre.
I also have a suspicion that the name Southland became attached to this theater through a typo near the bottom of this web page. Under some scans of ads for the theater is the line “The Southland Theater advertisements are from in and around 1936.” But the ads clearly say Southlawn.
This weblog post about the Tivoli Theatre in Spencer has photos showing the auditorium before and after the restoration.
This web page from a walking tour of downtown Richmond says that the Tivoli Theatre was built in 1926.
A business chronology published in the April 26, 2009, issue of the Richmond Palladium-Item (PDF here) has an ad for the Thor Construction Company, established 1987, and it says that the company remodeled the Sidewalk Cinema that year to add a second screen.
This web page from the Indiana Economic Digest has an excerpt from a Palladium-Item article about the Tivoli’s Wurlitzer organ (there’s a link to the original newspaper article but it now fetches only an error page.)
The Wikipedia page for this theater (which has several photos) says that it was designed by Italian architect Odoardo Cavagnari. A number of other Internet sources call Cavagnari an engineer. Archinform says he was both. As head of the colonial government’s Civil Engineering Office from 1912 to 1918, he prepared master plans for the cities of Asmara and Keren.
A vintage postcard of Spruce Street which looks to be from the early 1940s occasionally shows up on auction web sites (this link will probably go away soon.) The Princess Theatre is at the right. Comparing the postcard with modern street view, I think the Princess must have been on the east side of Spruce just south of First Street (Nebraska Highway 61.) It would have been across the street from the current locations of Verizon Wireless and H&R Block, so its most likely address would have been 17 N. Spruce Street.
The last section of this web page from the Farmingdale-Bethpage Historical Society says that the Unqua began in a shed-like structure. The April 7, 1916, issue of The Long Islander had this item about the theater construction project then underway:
It’s possible that the 1916 project was the rebuilding of the Unqua’s original shed-like building, but I’ve found no other items about the construction project, nor any earlier mentions of the theater, so I’m not certain.CinemaTour actually lists the Opera House. It’s possible they have a source indicating that it did show movies at some point, but I haven’t found any. The caption of a photo of the Opera House about ¾ of the way down this web page says that it opened in 1909, was converted into a woodworking shop in 1915, and was destroyed by fire in 1923. It did present some vaudeville shows during its brief life as a theater, though, and vaudeville shows were often accompanied by a reel or two of movies.
Here is a 1952 photo of Crossville’s Main Street with the Palace Theatre at left.
This item about the Criterion Theatre appeared in the July 18, 1927, issue of The Film Daily:
According to the report on drive-in construction in 1952 that appeared on Boxoffice of January 10, 1953, the Community Drive-In at Mascot, Tennessee, had been opened by the Cherokee Amusement Company. Car capacity and date of opening were not given.
Here is a a 1952 photo of Rogersville’s Main Street with the Roxy Theatre in the foreground.
The Carmike Movies 2 in La Follette closed in February, 2015. A January 23 report from ABC television affiliate WATE said that Carmike’s lease on the theater would be up on February 19, and that the building would then be converted into a new home for The Harbor, a community church.
The address of the law firm that now occupies the former Farmingdale Theatre is 360 N. Main Street. 354 was the address of the earlier Strand Theatre next door.